Over the years we have stayed on course with our strategy to increase localisation. India, as a market continues to grow, offering wide ranging opportunities with increased demand momentum, despite the pandemic. This, coupled with the conducive policy framework to promote local manufacturing activities, create attractive opportunities for our business. Despite facing multiple challenges due to the ongoing pandemic, we managed to keep the implementation on track with increased efficiency and competitiveness, which has started reflecting on our top and bottom line.
We are strengthening our local footprint, with capacity expansion at our plants in Savli and Vadodara underway. We are also setting up a greenfield manufacturing facility in Hosur at an investment of ` 3,000 million over the next few years, with the first phase becoming operational by end-2023. The facility will be used to manufacture transmission components and systems for the automotive and tractor segments.
Investment over the next 3 years
We are consistently working on improving the localisation ratio, our cost competitiveness and business mix to strengthen overall profitability. Additionally, procuring resources locally not only develops the competence of the supplier base, but also creates a positive impact on the entire supply chain ecosystem. Procuring resources locally makes us eligible to apply for several government contracts, and helps us contribute to the growth of our communities.
Over the last couple of years, we have made significant investments to build state-of-the-art R&D centres in Pune and Hosur. We continue to strengthen them by investing in the latest engineering tools and testing equipment and adding to the team size. The know-how built through decades of expertise is being leveraged through constant knowledge transfer from Europe. We established a global mechatronics centre in India, which will support the group in future mobility projects. The centre will further augment our competency and know-how on future technologies.
Focus areas for R&D in India
R&D spends
Initiatives undertaken over the past few years have helped us improve our logistics efficiencies and we continue to build and optimise our network. Despite, the year seeing multiple headwinds due to the global supply chain disruptions, we were able to plan well minimise the impact on our service levels. We have continued to make progress in terms of consolidating our logistics footprint and have set-up three new warehouses at strategic locations to reduce our turnaround time.
Awards for delivery and quality
Strategically located warehouses
Localisation has been a focal point for us in the past years, be it in product with inhouse investments but also in localised sourcing working with the supplier partners. It was key in navigating the unprecedent and dynamic operating environment. Our strategic priorities provided us the ammunition to be agile, resilient and efficient, a fact reflected across our performance metrics. Our focus on lean manufacturing, six sigma projects, low-cost automation, Methods-Time Measurement (MTM) projects, ergonomics projects, cobot and robot implementation further helped us reap the benefits of the localization strategy. Our plants at Savli and Hosur recently received global recognition for “best cost improvement plant” and “best engaged teams”.
The key focus for us in the next year is to strive for “next level of operational excellence”, enhancing localization with increasing value add, in existing and new products. Adapt to new production concepts with focus on digitalisation, connectivity, cobots, robots, AGV’s. and agility anchored with “New Schaeffler production system”. Efficiency improvement with optimised utilisation of resources and cost sensitive culture. Further, in line with the group’s goal to be climate neutral by 2030, sustainable operations is in focus with energy efficiency programs, usage of renewable energy, reducing carbon footprint with focus on reducing waste and waste management at the same time on water usage and water harvesting.
Mr. Sameer Mathur
Chief Operations Officer
